In the first of a series of guest blogs to celebrate the relaunched Scyfi Love blog, Neill Milton, aka @UnkleRupert on Twitter and the man behind the Man Made Movies blog, writes about the grass roots campaign he is involved with to earn Sam Rockwell as Oscar nomination for Moon ….

THURSDAY October 15 2009 was a landmark day in the history of science fiction.

Why? Because it was when director Duncan Jones (@manmademoon on Twitter and a friend of Scyfilove as these interviews show) asked people to get behind a grass roots campaign to win an Oscar nomination for Sam Rockwell, who stars as Sam Bell in Jones’ critically acclaimed low budget British indie Sci-Fi flick Moon.

Having recently launched a blog dedicated to news and views on the work of Mr Jones and the team at his production company, Liberty Films, I threw together a quick post to let my small band of followers know what was going down.

Very soon afterwards, we had the perfect campaign image from the very talented Magnus Holvold (@Magnulus), and an online petition setup by our friend Ryan Bolding (@Rboulding) and obviously the guidance of one who knows more than anyone about the work Sam Rockwell put in to achieve his fantastic performance, Duncan himself.

With the bare bones of a centralised campaign up and running, we hit upon using the Twitter hashtag #SamRockwellOscar and started to spread the word and ask our friends & followers to pass on the news and back our campaign / sign our petition, to gain a Best Actor Oscar nomination for Sam.

You may ask why Sam needs any help, especially if you’ve seen his performance, so I’ll tell you why.

Moon was completed on a budget of $5 Million, with every cent accounted for. A drop in the ocean compared to the worldwide publicity campaign alone for some of Summer 2009’s big hitters (Transformers, Star Trek), while even District 9 cost around $30 Million but was still seen as a low budget film.

Moon, despite critical success ( winner of the Michael Powell Award at the Edinburgh Film Festival and cleaning up at the annual Spanish Sitges Fantasy Film Fest) does not have the budget set aside for a full on campaign in the run up to the Oscar nominations in January 2009, where the cost of sending out screeners to all 6000 Academy voters can run to $200,000, let alone the cost of advertising in the run up to nominations in key publications.

So the only way to get the attention of those that can ultimately assist with obtaining a nomination for Sam Rockwell is to build a grass roots campaign, gathering an army of opinion from those that have seen Rockwell’s performance in Moon and highlighting what is one of the most incredible performances by a lead actor in recent years.

If we don’t raise awareness, then Sam’s achievement may go unrecognised by his peers, which would be a damn shame, and it would also be a damn shame if we sat back and did not at least try to make a difference.

I’d add that if we can gain a nomination for Rockwell, if Moon and Duncan Jones can get the recognition they so thoroughly deserve, can you imagine what this will do for the future of real, thinking, Sci-Fi, currently in resurgence thanks to the success of Moon so far, and the further success of District9 ?

Hopefully the industry would sit up and take notice and see there is a thriving community out here starving for well made, thought provoking, hardcore Sci-Fi, whose appetites are in no way sated by the prevalent form of CGI eye candy we have been offered for so long.